Tag Archives: Routine

I just came back from traveling yesterday and found myself filled with motivation this morning. It seems that taking a break every once in a while from your normal lifestyle is definitely one of the best ways to motivate yourself and get back on track.

However, I did notice that the major spike in my “wanting to do something”ness came as I took a nice long walk (7 hours long) in a natural forest that had been made into a park. The is something about the singing of birds and the breezing of air that soothes the soul, not that I usually believe in that.

Due to the nature of our societal lives, I believe that the humans of future generations might not be capable of experiencing nature as we can, what a pity.

I guess all I wanted to say is that the best way to deal with writer’s block, returning to exercising, or any other motivation-caused disruptance, is to take a nice long walk amidst nature. This really works, but I have no idea how long the effect will last yet.

As with all my posts, It has been a while since I updated my exercise-related threads.

Last time I stopped, the program followed by me was strong lifts. After a grueling six months of following this strict exercise regiment, not worrying too much about food, I gained a total of over 15 Kgs – about 32 lbs.

It is inadvisable to continue with the same regiment for over three months, based on personal experience. However, since I did not reach my plateau by the end of the first three months, I decided to go on for another three months.

After strong lifts, I followed no specific exercise routine. Switching between weight lifting, cardio and calisthenics, I managed to maintain my gains rather well. The next routine I intend to go on with, by 1st January 2013, is a calisthenics based routine. I will rotate between different exercises and adding weights to limit my last set count to less than 8 reps. Considering the large numbers of reps I can pull in un-weighted sets, I will have to add a significant amount of weights.

I estimate that the downside for this would be the reduced stress on cardio, as my calisthenics exercises have reached a point where its a cardio routine. However, I intend to supplement the routine with daily cardio before or after exercising, depending on my energy levels during the workout.

I started noticing that as I increased the weights I train with, my I keep loosing proper form, it reached a level that when I squatted I couldn’t break parallel, so I decided to take a step back in my weights.

If you don’t want to be someone that has a stiff and unnatural walk, then you should make the most out of your exercise motion, try starting from the point of least muscle stress to the point of most muscle stress.

When I do bench presses I make sure that the bar touches my chest when lowering it, and the push motion ends at just before my elbows lock, this was the form I lost at 220 lbs, now I’m back to 190 lbs to master the form yet again.

Squatting used to hurt my knees and back occasionally, but since I started breaking parallel at the ‘down’ motion, the pain is completely gone, and the soreness resonates to to areas that it didn’t reach before.

From now on I will prioritize form over gains or weight increases, this should result in a better overall posture, more flexibility and eventually getting a stronger and fitter body.

So I’ve been exercising for 4 weeks now, 3 times a week. I keep increasing my exercising weights by increments of 5 lbs each workout, and I finally split the five exercises in a practical manner.

The problem is that I cannot add my calisthenics to the routine due to time limitations, I only have 1.5 hours each day to exercise, and whenever I exercise heavy weights I require rest the following day.

Another factor I’ve begun noticing is motivation, the routine has been established and its becoming easier and easier to start my day early, it started feeling like an obligation, like washing your teeth in the morning or making your bed.

I finally set down with exercising 2-3 heavy weight exercises and doing from 10-30 mins cardio each day I workout, I also add a minimum of 1 calisthenics exercise. Eventually I plan on working out 5 times a week with cardio substituting with my rest days, I still can’t find the energy for it, possibly due to the winter.

So far I’ve been keeping track of my progress via a sheet where I record the reps, weights, exercises and sets for each workout. I am considering replacing the workout number with the actual date of the workout, also adding my weight and, perhaps, body fat percentage.

I plan to continue with this routine for another 8 weeks and, hopefully, by then I would have a better conclusion regarding the experianced workout, so far I’m loving it.

So far I didn’t really give you any solid routines to follow, or even exercises.

Today, I will share with you my current workout, it is a simple non-time consuming workout that I do as often as I can without disrupting my work-flow.

For starters it is greatly influenced by a guy called Mehdi Hadim, his website is called stronglifts and that is his address <http://stronglifts.com/>

I split my workouts between strength training, calisthenics, and cardio.

Everyday I do some cardio, on my weight days (strength) I do 10-30 minutes of warm-up cardio, this is not considered cardio at all since its under 45 minutes, its just to warm-up and get the blood flowing.

On my calisthenics days I cardio for about 45 – 90 minutes and then go ahead with the rest of my training.

My schedule goes as follows:

Day 1: Strength (all exercises but cardio are 3 sets and 5 reps)

10 – 30 mins of cardio

Bench press

Squats

Military press

Deadlifts

Rows

Day 2: Calisthenics (I aim for having my max rep at 12 or 15 and add weights to achieve this)

45 – 90 mins of cardio

Dips

Pull-ups

Push-ups

Crunches

Inverse rows

Rinse and repeat, that is the workout I’ve been following for about a month now and its working just fine, I will be changing it two months from now to a new routine, not sure what yet.

I use this table to keep track of my progress for this routine, each routine has its own table Recording My Progress.

The point is to keep adding light weights every single exercise and continuously improve and progress.